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Making The Best of the Dream

We booked this cruise about 8 months prior to departure. We booked two rooms, which ended up being on opposite floors on opposite sides of the ship. I roomed with my brother, T, 17 almost 18. My mother roomed with my brother A, 15 years old.

TRAVEL PLANS: We flew into Orlando the night previous to our cruise departure. We stayed at an Orlando hotel and got a $20 p/person shuttle through AAA Transport the next day. AAA Transport was quite a mess, stopping at almost 20 stops after picking us up before finally leaving to Cape Canaveral, about an hour drive.

EMBARKATION: Upon arrival at the pier, our shuttle driver dropped us off right at the baggage location. Several guys were handling our bags and giving us tags to write our names and cabin numbers on. This was a little bit of a stressful process, as we were somewhat confused on what to do or where to go. Luckily, we did all get our baggage in good time and it appeared it had been well handled.

BOARDING THE More
DREAM: We arrived in the check-in line about 1:30. The line was enormous and stretched outside and around the massive Carnival building. Security onto the ship was slow. It took about an hour to get inside the building, and another 1/2 hour to get through security to the desk to check in. At this line, we were given a card to fill out and sign that stated we had no flu-like H1N1 symptoms. The check-in process was quite smooth but time consuming. We were issued our "Sail & Sign" cards at this point. Before getting on the ship, a crew member put our Sail & Sign card into a reader which took our picture. (See Sail & Sign Card below). We each took a small carry-on bag with us when we boarded. It was difficult finding our rooms at first, but once we found them and dropped off our small bags, we decided to grab some lunch.

1ST DAY: Then the nightmare started. If you've read other reviews, you've read about the 10th floor "Lido" deck being an absolute nightmare. The first day, it is! The crew was completely overwhelmed - dirty tables were everywhere and people were very grouchy. Trying to get something to eat on the lido deck the first day was like going to Wal-Mart on Black Thursday. I HIGHLY suggest you eat lunch before boarding The Dream to avoid the massive lines. Seating is next to impossible, and it was just an all around nightmare. However, the rest of the time we were onboard, the Lido deck seemed to be fine, but sometimes a little crowded. Our guess was that the crew is pretty tired on Saturdays since they debark the previous guests and embark new ones. The muster drill was easy and we were glad to not have to take our life jackets all over the ship. However, the muster drill was extremely ineffective, and the foreign-speaking crew members were very hard to understand. Dinner service on the first night seemed extremely unorganized. Fortunately, it got much better. However, we were quite concerned out dining experiences were going to be terrible. Luckily, we were wrong.

DREAM DECOR: Give your three-year-old some swatch samples for tile, paint, fixtures and carpet. Tell your three-year-old to match these swatches for rooms. Your three-year-old just did a better design job than the designer of the dream. The ambiance and decor is so tacky it will make you literally sick. We had a really fun time mocking the "designer" of the dream. You'll see mirrors with gold flecks in them and what appears to be neon colored bouncy balls cut in half and glued to the outside of the mirror (Dream Atrium/Lobby Elevators). In that same room, you'll see olive green swirled marble tile, pink carpet, gold mixed with chrome mixed with stainless steel and blue glass. Oh, and don't forget the cheezy artwork. And that's just the atrium. Encore Theater (the main theater) is also a decorating nightmare with the pink and orange zebra striped upholstery mixed with granite tile and bright red painted rocks on the walls. It's really just something you have to experience yourself. Did Carnival have a whole bunch of extra products leftover from other ships when they built the Dream? It almost appears that nobody particularly thought any of it out. Hallways to staterooms are filled with tacky 40s/50s types of art deco with unmatched carpets and ceiling tile and chair-rail which doesn't make any sense. It didn't ruin our trip by any means, but it sure could have been much better for the price of the quality products they put throughout the ship! There was absolutely no theme to anything and we couldn't make heads or tails about the color palette. We're guessing there wasn't one.

CARNIVAL CAPER: The Caper is the daily newsletter left in your room by your room steward while you're at dinner. It contains information about the next day's activities with a time table and descriptions about activities. The Caper also advertises all the other crap you can spend your money on, like "specials" to the spa "Only $99!" and specials in the duty-free gift shops (big whoop, you'll save $2) among other advertisements.

DAYS AT SEA: We expected to have lots of "activities" to do. At first, we wanted to do everything. Unfortunately, it seemed all the good activities went on during our first day at sea. There's always so much to do, and you're never really sure what to expect until you actually get there.

HOUSEKEEPING: Our housekeeper pleasantly greeted us the first day we boarded. We rarely saw our room steward. Our room was always very well cleaned each morning. Every day, we took a nap before our early dinner time (6:00). We would simply put our "Crusin': Service, Please" tag on our door while at dinner and our rooms would be cleaned and beds made a second time. These people know how to make a nice tight bed - it was wonderful, and our room steward did awesome. Everything was always spotless.

ROOM SERVICE: Of course room service is complimentary. Using the TV, you can make an order if you don't want to call. This way, you can see everything that is offered. Several unusual but smart items are offered including ziploc bags full of ice in case of an injury, things like that. The cookies were terrible and crunchy. The list is limited, but it is free and they bring it right to your room. Don't forget to cash tip your delivery person. Chocolate milk is only 1% and tastes kind of gross when you're used to 2%. Most of the time we were so full, food didn't seem like a good idea.

DINING: Carnival has some great starters. I especially enjoyed the fresh fruit that was offered the first three nights. Also, every time there is bisque, be sure to order it. The strawberry bisque and chilled Indian spice pumpkin bisque is incredible. Overall, the food was always very good. T ordered the duck and didn't like it, probably just not his taste. We told our waiter the first night that we would like a large glass of milk with our dinner each night, and they were happy to do this for us. The water at dinner always tasted a little funny and chlorinated. Every night, the Mat'r dee would say "SSShhhhhhowtime" into the microphone, and the servers would all roll their eyes. For some reason, Carnival thinks that guests enjoy interrupting a nice meal by having dining room servers "perform" to ridiculous singing and dancing routines. Not only was it embarassing, but it made my dinners much less enjoyable. It made me uncomfortable. Plus our dinners were usually 90 minutes to two hours anyway, and this just made it 15 minutes longer. We rarely had our desert ordered before "Sssshhooowtime" so we were held hostage to watching the stupid routine if we wanted desert, which I usually did. Quite a trade off I'd say.

DINING WINE SERVICE: Absolute fail. The first night, I requested a wine menu. There were several options that I wanted to try, so I asked for an opinion from the wine server about which cabernet was the dryest and oakiest. He suggested a chardonnay. What an idiot. I asked if I could have a sample of a wine which was sold both by the glass and the bottle before I purchased a bottle (almost every restaurant that serves wine offers this). I was told that would be fine. Then the server brought me an entire glass and charged me for it. Needless to say, that was the only wine I ever bought onboard the Dream. This story may sound snobbish, but when you save your money and take time off work and make all the travel arrangements, you expect to have good service while on your vacation. I'm big into wine, so this was disappointing.

ENTERTAINMENT: We didn't attend the country show, but my mom and brothers went to "Dancin' in the Street". I didn't go because by the time I got to the theatre after dinner, it was almost completely full and only nosebleed seats were available (there are some really terrible seats towards the right and left sides of the balcony). They said it was fantastic. I attended the Mo Town show which was really great - the female singer can really belt out those high notes. I was very impressed. I was also cast in the "Legends" show with 8 other karaoke winners, where guests on the cruise get costumes and sing live to pre-selected songs. The live band at all the shows was great. The lighting, set, effects, and dedication the cast puts into each show is simply amazing.

CASINO: Total fail. Nobody got paid anything at the casino. My mother played quite a bit and finally gave up. Apparently in international waters, casinos don't have a required payout. I played the first night for about an hour and gave up, even though I'm a diamond member at Harrah's casinos and love to gamble. The slots were incredibly tight, I never saw anyone winning. At table games, if you don't have cash, you can use your Sign & Sail card, which charges a 3% "convenience fee". The casino is small and wasn't usually very crowded, probably because of the terrible payouts. About 1/4th of the casino slot machines are in a smoking area. You can put cash into slot machines, but you are required to put your Sign & Sail card into the machine, too. When you cash out, your credits go onto your sign and sail card in a separate casino account. To get your money back, you must visit the cashier's desk. This was likely done to control minors gambling in the casino.

SMOKING AREAS: There are about 4. This is not a smoking-friendly ship. The piano bar, Caliente dance club, 1/4th of the slots at the casino, and one area off the Ocean Plaza outside on the fifth floor are smoking areas.

BEVERAGE SERVICE: Nobody approached me to buy a drink until the 3rd day. There were very few cocktail waitresses, which was almost a good thing - it helped avoid temptation to spend $9 on a drink. Yes, I said $9. Most well mixed drinks with juice or soda are $7.50. Beers are $6.50. Crappy wine is around $8 a glass. All in all, the prices are way too expensive. Even though we were previous Carnival guests, there were no free drinks at the "past customer reception". The ONLY free drinks were the last night at the "Fun Farewell Party" from 5:00-6:00. Drink up - this is the only time it will be free! IF you like to have a few drinks, you'd better plan on having about $750 budgeted towards it. The drinks are SO expensive....it's ridiculous.

BINGO: Cruise Director Todd would often wake us up from our afternoon naps by announcing Bingo specials over the ship's PA system. For this reason (and so many more), we really hated Todd. (more on this douchebag later). The first several nights before shows, they would have a $500 Bingo. $10 p/card or $20 for 3 cards. Now, keep in mind that the Dream has about 4,000 guests. We usually counted at least 100 people (usually more) getting bingo cards, and you can bet money that most of them were buying 3 for $20. Simple math suggests that Carnival rakes in about $3,500 from bingo alone each night, giving only about $500 to the winner. And if there are two winners, that amount is split. What an incredibly cheap ripoff. Save your money.

ACTIVITIES/PUBLIC AREAS: SCATTERGORIES: This pathetic game of scattergories was run by Cruise Director Todd's flaming Brittish friend, James. It was terribly unorganized and not fun in any way. I highly discourage anyone from attending any events where James is coordinating them. For the record, if "O" is the letter rolled in scattergories, "Old Sock" does not count as a piece of laundry. We walked away after about 7 minutes of his inability to create a fun atmosphere by enforcing the rules of the game. NEWLYWED GAME: KARAOKE: Karaoke was held in several locations throughout the cruise. Unfortunately, the times for karaoke were weird. For example, 7:30-10:30, or 10:30-midnight. Obviously, karaoke with this many people needs to be open longer. Mouna, the karaoke director, is a really great person who I worked with during the Legends show. She's got a great personality and is a lot of fun. COMEDY ACTS: Several PG and R rated comedy acts go on throughout the cruise. Unfortunately, every time I would try to go to one, the Burgandy lounge was completely packed. They run several shows, but if you're not there half an hour before the show, you won't get a seat. PIANO BAR: The Dream has two piano players. Ronnie reminds me of Morgan Freeman and plays lots of old-people musical numbers. He's great and is a lot of fun. Ronnie usually plays before dinner times, we really enjoyed his playing. The other piano player is Barry. We really liked Barry the first time and second time we heard him. After that, he was just plain repetitive. Be careful when walking through the piano bar; he may single you out and make friendly jokes which will cause people to point and laugh, all in good humor.

CALIENTE (dance club): Caliente usually gets hot around midnight and goes all the way until 3:30AM. The DJ is pretty descent and the atmosphere is really cool. Lights in the dance floor and around the entire club are great - lots of cool seating. Pretty typical of a metropolitan dance club you'd find in most large cities. If you're still up after Caliente closes, you can have some great fun on the lido deck pizza place.

OTHER SHIP FEATURES: HOT TUBS: There are several hot tubs open on the Dream - I think we counted 10. However, they are all open at different times, all posted in the caper. Many of these tubs were closed with signs "High Clorination Process - do not enter" when they were supposed to be open. This was disappointing to us. SWIMMING POOLS: Swimming pools were open at ridiculous times/hours. There are two and they aren't very big. Don't get too excited about swimming while on the Dream, because when the pools are open, they are filled with kids. WATER SLIDES: The water slides were shut down most of the time were onboard because of weather. They looked like fun for kids, but not really an adult experience, and not as great as the Carnival website claims they are. MINI GOLF: Yes, there is an 18-hole mini-golf course. My brother played it and said it's not much fun since your ball rolls around with the pitch of the ship. BASKETBALL COURTS: A full-size regulation basketball court is on the 11th floor of the Dream. Good luck finding it - it's tricky to get to. If you play basketball, this looks like a great court. LIDO OUTDOOR THEATRE: We sat and watched a few movies at the outdoor theater but they're uncomfortable to watch because there are so many people walking back and forth. Most of our cruise, it was chilly on the Lido (we sailed during an unusually cold period). Blankets were available on the Lido deck. LASER SHOWS: Unfortunately, since the ship is moving, the laser shows are kind of...dorky. The idea on Carnival's part was great, but the actual execution wasn't. It's all a bit underwhelming, but fun to check out. Be sure to grab a hot dog while you're up there - the lido deck chili dogs are awesome and high quality, as far as hot dogs go.

CLUB 02: 15 y/o brother A really enjoyed Club02. He hung out there lots and played video games. I didn't get to hear much about it, but he met lots of friends and had a really great time. The staff at Club 02 seemed really competent.

SAIL & SIGN & SIGN & SIGN CARD: The sail & sign card is your stateroom key and your charge card, connected to your credit/debit card. Cash is not used anywhere for anything on the ship except in the casino (and don't expect to get that back!). Every time you purchase something, a credit card receipt is printed and your folio is charged. Your folio total is charged to your credit card on the last day of the cruise.

TIPS: $70 is automatically charged per person onto your sign and sail account. We felt that this was mostly fair, so we didn't make any changes to it. You can see your sign and sail folio charges anytime on your stateroom TV.

CRUISE DIRECTOR & STAFF: Cruise Director Todd quotes: "And we're just all really excited to have you here, you're our favorite guests we've ever sailed with". How fake is that? "And you just won't want to miss it - everyone is going to be talking about it - it's just going to be so great, so be sure to be at Bingo tonight". He must get a cut of that bingo money. We were sick and tired of Todd by the end of our cruise. He's very insincere and really doesn't make anything "fun". In your stateroom, you can watch a channel completely devoted to the cruise director's staff interviewing people and acting like they are comedians onboard the ship. Unfortunately, none of them are at all funny. It's all very stupid and didn't enhance our experience whatsoever. They were all very annoying, but we had fun making jokes about them, as did many of the other Dream guests.

DEBARKATION: Relatively easy. The night previous to debarkation, our room steward left color-coded tags for our bags in our room. We left our bags outside and the crew delivered them to an off-boat baggage claim so you don't have to carry them all over the place through customs. You also have the ability to take all your bags off the boat yourself, but the baggage claim was really easy. Although customs lines appeared long, we were off the boat in about 1/2 an hour with our luggage from the carosel in hand. Customs was very easy, as we already had our customs cards filled out which were left by our steward the night before. I suggest you stay on the boat as long as possible; feel free to sleep in, as it seems there is no hurry to get off the boat. We debarked at about 9:00AM, but likely could have stayed considerably later to catch some extra sleep and to avoid these lines. Also, Cruise DIrector Todd puts on a special "Debarkation" meeting, which you really don't need to waste your time with.

PROS: Cruises are always great. The important things like roomservice, food and dining service were pretty good. We really liked stopping at Belize and Cozumel.

CONS: Carnival's standards have gone WAY downhill since we last sailed with them six years ago. They now offer much more in the way of things you can pay extra for, and it seems like less and less is included in the actual price of the cruise. Carnival is charging WAY too much money for drinks. Casino was aweful. The first few days, the crew seemed to be struggling to get anything right. This boat is just WAY too big; you can really walk for miles each day just to go to dinner and shows. Our walkie-talkies we brought with us didn't work because of the size of the ship.

Conclusion: It's likely that we'll sail with RCI again on our next cruise. Although it is a little more expensive, it really is that much better in all areas. Just because the Dream is the biggest ship in the Carnival fleet does not mean it's the best. The Dream does not have any more features than most boats that handle 2,000-2,500 guests. The Dream simply has more floors with staterooms, creating much more crowded public areas than what you experience in most ships. The Dream overbuilt staterooms and underbuilt public areas. It was just too crowded for us, and next time we'll travel on a smaller ship. Part of what makes a cruise fun is the people you meet and the people you're traveling with. We had a great time, and I met some really great people, and that's what I took away from the whole experience. I hope you have a great time on your next cruise, too! Less

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Cabin review: 2467

Interior room towards back bottom of ship. Very little rocking or movement. Not too far from the elevators, and close to "Scarlet" dining room just a quick trip up the steps one floor. Far away from the "Encore" theatre. Worst thing about this cabin: When porting, entire room shakes and vibrates violently and wakes you up early in the morning. This is especially bad with a hangover! Storage: Really awesome - 3 huge closets; 2 with hangers (limited number of hangers - about 6 per closet so you might want to bring some of your own as room service won't bring any more) and the other closet with lots of shelves. Desk has 5 large drawers and two small nightstands store something small. Beds are high enough to stuff luggage underneath. Lots of shelves built into the mirror in bathroom allow for plenty of toiletry storage.
Two single beds can be either pushed together to make one large bed or can be separated with beds on sides of walls with night stands in the middle. Flat-screen TV mounted from ceiling over safe cabinet. Medium sized safe is free to use and works great. Lighting is very good in these rooms. Entire room design very well thought out and very nice. Florescent lighting takes a bit to turn on. Switches also located near beds for convenient shutting off. Artwork inside room is tacky like the rest of the ship. Single beds are somewhat uncomfortable and small, pillows are nice and fluffy and there are two extra pillows located in bottom of stateroom closet for a total of 6. Large bottles of water
The minibar was locked when we checked into our room, which was fine because I wanted to avoid the temptation of spending all that extra money. Staterooms also include two nice terrycloth robes which you can take out of your room to walk to the pool or hot tub in. You can also take these home for $34 (If I remember right), but who has room in their suitcase?!

Port and Shore Excursions

Unfortunately I don't remember the exact name of the excursion, but I believe it was "4x4, boat ride, suspension bridge, rainforest and cave tour" or something like that. IT was $99 p/person and completely worth every penny. This was the only excursion we took, and it was very awesome.

Belize City has shallow waters around it, so ships must use tenderboats to ferry you into the city. Again, a pier area has been built around the pier where security officers check everyone coming in and out of the pier area. Belize is kind of rough, so this made us feel much safer (however, after our excursion we did venture out into some of the other shops outside the pier - lots of mahogany crafts. We didn't buy anything, though, as it was mostly just trinkets and junk.)

This tour meets early (about 7:45 AM ship time), so you're one of the first tender ships to leave the boat, so there is very little wait. The crew of the Dream has the tender boat situation set up great when porting at Belize - if you're on an excursion, you are assigned a tenderboat number and time to meet in the theater. (By the way, your excursion tickets are delivered to your stateroom the night before your excursion) When your number is called, a crew member directs you to the proper embarkation deck and area. It was all very non-stressful and didn't take long.

Once your ferryboat arrives (about 1/2 an hour), your group will be greeted by a tour guide who takes you to a speedboat. Although this speedboat looks small, it fits about 25 people and goes quite fast. A seven-mile trip near the shore of Belize in the speedboat shows you the country from the ocean. We saw dolphins and manatees. The speedboat then goes upstream down a large river at a slower speed. On both sides of the river are dense rainforest filled with egrets, birds, enormous dragon iguanas, all kinds of excellent wildlife. We felt very safe with our tour guides, and it was obvious that they have been giving this tour for years. The scenery alone was worth the $100 excursion price!

After the boat tour, you land on a small peninsula upstream from the ocean to drive the 4x4s. This peninsula has lots of citrus trees and unusual vegetation which I had never seen before - enormous flowers, bushes, trees - it's all very beautifully landscaped. Also, there are well-maintained bathrooms with running water. Drinks are complimentary at this stop as well. After a short orientation (And I mean SHORT!), the tour guides asked us to get into groups of 4-6. Each 4x4 has a driver and passenger seat and four additional riders can ride in the back of the jeep. We were able to claim one jeep for our family of 4. There was very little in the way of instruction, and all jeeps are manual-drive stick shift jeeps. In other words, if you haven't driven a stick, don't even attempt it, as it these are difficult to drive. The tour guides asked for IDs and allowed my 17 year old brother to drive. The first part of the drive is through small village and rural areas on a "road" (I use that term loosely, as we have farm roads in Nebraska which are better maintained than these roads!). It was awesome to see the way people live in Belize, the types of houses they live in, the poverty and the overall lifestyles of the Belize people. We saw lots of stray dogs and cats, huge trash heaps on sides of the roads, people burning things, chickens everywhere, etc. Then we drove on a highway for about 15 miles. This did make me a little nervous (because rules of the road in Belize must be much different than in US and they were never explained to us), but since we were caravaning it turned out fine. After getting off the highway on another "road", we had the option to change drivers. Now came the reason we had the 4x4s - this rocky and rough dirt road traveled near mountains, through a rainforest next to a river, and we had a great time hitting puddles and going up steep hills. At one point, we were on the upslope of a hill and the jeep quit. Since there was a vehicle in front of us and behind us, it took some serious manouvering to get it started and over the hill, but we eventually figured it out. Driving through the jungle was amazing, we loved it.

Once our 4x4 trip was over, we were at another "landing" area where nice clean bathrooms and free bottles of water awaited us. Also, we were given the option to put bags into free lockers, which we were glad we took advantage of. Another tour guide divided us up into groups of 8. We were then given head lamps for our cave tour and crossed over a large shaky suspension bridge (looked safe, felt scary!) over a large river to the rainforest trail. Our tour guide pointed out plants, animals and insects in the rainforest and explained their medicinal properties. Our tourguide grew up near this rainforest and told us about his family and their great health because they use the rainforest for all their medical needs. In fact, many pharmacutical companies in the US purchase plants from this rainforest for some of their products. The trail was easy to walk and was about a mile in length.

At the entrance of the cave, our guide gave us some historical Mayan information about the cave. It's about what you would expect - we saw a couple small bats in the ceiling of the cave. The cave is very warm inside; about 15-20 degrees warmer than the outside air. There was some difficult maneuvering where you have to "walk like a duck" or get down on your hands and knees and crawl through some tight spaces. This was somewhat unpleasant for me because I was suffering from a couple of cracked ribs on an injury I got before our trip. However, it was quite worth it and wasn't extremely difficult. The cave is about 1/4th mile in length and opens to another trail through the rainforest where our guide told us more about the plants and trees. The trail led us back to the 4x4 landing.

After another bathroom break and retrieving our items from the lockers, we were shown to a large covered open hut where some women had prepared lunch for us. Lunch was a typical Belizian lunch and included fried chicken, caw slaw, red beans and rice, and a fried plantain (interesting!) as well as bottled water, canned soft drinks or orange rum punch, if you wanted to get really excited.

After lunch, we boarded a party bus which took us on the 45 minute trip back to Belize City. Rum Punch was allowed on the bus and we were served lots of it. Music was played on the bus and it was a fun atmosphere. The driver was even nice enough to pull over to the side of the road to let some of us take a much needed leak after drinking so much rum punch. The bus left us at the pier security gates.

This was just a great excursion, I highly suggest it, especially if you have kids over 10.

Costa Maya is a pier-port, so again - no ferryboats (yay!) The short pier ends with several shops. Again, you'll want to walk the distance of about 1/2 mile to the edge of the pier gates and get a taxi ($2 p/person for 3 mile trip) to take you to the downtown area (Trust me - you won't want to walk!)

The downtown area is similar to Cozumel, but the shopping isn't as good. Mostly small hut-type shanties line the inland side of a walk-way with a large public beach on the other side. The huge beach looked really fun but unfortunately we didn't know it was there so we didn't take our swimsuits or towels. Although we had fun at Costa Maya, it was in some ways just "more of the same". However, we found plenty of fun things to do and shopped for about two hours, and didn't buy much. We took a cab back to the pier and took a big nap before dinner.

Cozumel is a pier port, so no need to take a ferry in. Get right off the boat and walk down the 1/2 mile pier to the port. DO NOT shop at the shops at the pier! Exit the pier and ask a cab driver to take you downtown (more on this below). Pier shops are overpriced and shop owners don't negotiate and likely have a kick-back paid to carnival, as they ask you what ship you're on when you stop there. You only want to shop at places that don't have price tags on anything :)

I have always loved Cozumel. We have snorkled there before and loved it. However, on this trip we decided to skip an excursion at Cozumel and do some shopping instead - we were very glad we did this.

One big mistake we made was thinking we could walk to the downtown shopping area from the pier. We walked about a mile and gave up and got a cab. Cabs are only $7 (we had 4 in our group) to take you to the downtown area. So, I suggest you do this immediately directly outside the pier gates.

Your cab driver will likely drop you off at a jewelry store at the end of the downtown area where someone at the jewelry shop will open the cab door and invite you to their jewelry shop. Of course, the cab drivers have an "in" with these shop owners and probably get some kind of kick-back on purchases.

After being dropped off, you can slowly make your way back to the pier area and stop at all the little knick-knack places up and down the street. Cozumel downtown is basically one busy street with the ocean and beach on one side and stores on the other side. We also walked on the arterials and found some really good deals on jewelry. We didn't spend much, but my brother bought an awesome white gold and beautiful heart-shaped red ruby ring for $45 (dealer was asking $180) and I bought my mom a beautiful mother-of-pearl bracelet for $20 (dealer wanted $85). Remember to ALWAYS negotiate a much lower price; walk away from counter offers and they will follow you out the store. You can get your lowest price almost always! Dealers will act offended at first. Also, many stores carry exactly the same stuff, such as the medium sized onyx elephants. They will tell you they are $75, but you CAN get them for $20 if you keep asking at different locations.

Also, shop owners will tell you things like "This is my father's store - come see" and "hey lady, I'll give you discount!". These shop owners play on American values and politeness to try to get you to enter their stores. Be on the look out for fake silver - anyone can stamp "0.925" on any type of metal, so know what you're looking for before you go, and be careful not to show too much interest in anything or it will hurt your negotiating! Simply say "Oh, this is kind of neat...hmm..." and make sure they hear you.

Warning: CHECK YOUR CHANGE. We got several Nicaraguan nickels (exactly the same size as American quarters) as change at several shops. OF course, they are NOT worth 25-cents, but we found out that if you get stuck with them, most vending machines in Mexico that take American quarters will take them.

I'm a Realtor by trade, so I love negotiating. If you're not into that, you'll probably want to skip the downtown area at Cozumel.

Rotan is an island off of Honduras and is probably owned by Carnival Cruise Lines (Similar to Labadee, Haiti owned by RCI). The pier is very short and ships port very close to shore. The shops at this pier are terrible in comparison with those off-pier in Cozumel. We did not venture off the pier-security, as from what we understood, there is no "downtown area" as it's not really a town. However, for $5 p/person, there is a large sky-tram that will take you to a private nice man-made beach owned by Carnival where there are lots of little stores (we didn't check them out) and restaurants (why would you spend the extra money when food on the boat is free?).

There are also lots of beach chairs and cabanas at this beach, it's a nice place to sip on an $8 pina colada and watch people swim.

Honestly, there didn't seem to be much to this island. This was probably the most relaxing port we stopped at, and definately had the best beach front of all our stops.